


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 14)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. Chapter 1

##  [So about Dean and AUBobby](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/179903143598/so-about-dean-and-aubobby)

  


([x](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/179850615218/sammyhale-supernatural-episode-14x05-nightmare))

This is sort of, tbh, the opening paragraph of my watching notes in substance, except I thought of it right now based on the promo scene so congrats, you get it a day early. 

It seems like we may get Dean and AUBobby paired off, and alone, and if not, then at the very least they get separated enough to have a one on one conversation.

Now we have [the new promo video](http://televisionpromos.tumblr.com/post/179899018265), I’m thinking a suspicion about AUBobby and Dean is getting stronger, that they’re going to be in conflict, and of course AUBobby has picked up that hat which is either literally Michael’s and he is Michael, or is the same style down to colour and design as Michael’s and he’s a Michael mirror, and either way it sucks, right?

Here’s something to consider, with Jim Beaver being back every year and Bobby’s face remaining a part of the ongoing SPN story regularly enough that I think this takes some serious concentration to maintain when dealing with the character dynamics:

Until 11x16, Dean did not see Bobby’s face once, not even to communicate with a false Bobby. In 11x16, Dean and season4!Bobby didn’t exchange a word and had such a fleeting meeting that both of them tried to laugh it off as a dream to their Sam or Rufus. In 12x23 it was the first time Dean had come face to face with a Bobby of any sort, and it’s not our Bobby.

In the intervening time from Bobby’s funeral, Sam met the real Bobby in 8x19 and saved him from Hell, hallucinated Bobby in 9x01, and talked to the real Bobby in 10x17. Post-death, for all of Carver-era, Bobby and Sam were the only ones to have a relationship, even though in 9x01 we did have an imaginary Dean with the imaginary Bobby. 

Cas, Jack and Mary are the only characters to currently have any one-on-one scenes with AUBobby, and Cas’s we didn’t see on screen except for their meeting. The stuff we have seen with AUBobby and Dean has been extremely removed and in the middle of conflict, or AUBobby toasting them at the end of 12x22. In 12x23 Sam was the one giving the apocalypse peeps the talk about the AU they were now in while Dean was out, of course foreshadowing his stronger leadership role to them while Dean was Michaeled, and of course Sam has the month of searching for Michael where AUBobby would be a somewhat equal, as the apocalypse leader of these peeps, a role Sam has stepped into in their world for the most part. 

This isn’t me coming to any particular point about not trusting AUBobby or thinking he’s evil or casting judgements on him (UNLESS HE’S MICHAEL but that’s an unrelated meta point I just wanted to get in in case I am right :P) but specifically to look at Dean’s POV of AUBobby representing not only the AU peeps who have intruded in his life and filled his home and taken Sam on as their chief, but also specifically for him, has the face of the fallen father figure, and Dean has spent almost no time with AUBobby and has yet to have a significant character moment with him. 

Mary has got really cosy with him because their dynamic works in reverse - he thinks he knows HER better than she knows him because he had a thing for Mary Campbell. For the guys, of course they knew Bobby and he’s the impostor with the temptingly kind fatherly face associated with all the nice stuff he can impart to Jack in 14x01, because they have no weird pre-existing relationship, so AUBobby absolutely has the capacity to BE like Bobby once was. But he’s NOT to them, and we as the audience particularly suffer with his friendly face. I know I was HORRIFIED when I saw Crimson Peak because I knew Bobby too well to be impartial about Jim Beaver’s fate, you know? :P After 11x16 I was interested in how many people were surprised when I pushed this line that it was the first and only time Dean had seen Bobby since his death, because his memory and overall presence blanketing the show creates a false sense of Bobby comfort, and I suspect that’s exactly what this episode is going to yank back. 

So I’m just sounding out the situation as I see it and explaining some of the facts of these dynamics to hold in our minds as we watch, perhaps because it will really help with whatever is to come if we are not expecting things to be as they should, but as they are.


	2. What is Michael's Objective?

[lalascreation](http://lalascreation.tumblr.com/)  asked:

What is Michael's main objective again? I feel like he is less scary a villain bc im never sure WHAT he is doing with all that power he has...

 

* * *

<http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/post/181121934953/secretsandgreeneyes-1409-the-spear-me-and> 

I saw this while I was still scrolling and musing on some of my more complicated asks :P TL:DR he wants this world for the #Aesthetic. He liked the total power of dominating the other world but it was messy and he got resisted. Fighting Lucifer alone created an enormous crater, and then all his attacks with the angels were blunt force explosions, fire raining down from above. 

When he saw the main world in Lucifer’s mind, all that stock footage of places that hadn’t yet been destroyed, he termed the main SPN verse paradise world in contrast to how everyone was calling his apocalypse world. He could see the difference, and like Lucifer, he does appreciate the work Chuck put into Creation, he just doesn’t care so much about the humans using it. He makes the same sales pitch to Jack back in 13x14 where he has Zach explain nuclear war and global warming to Jack to tell him humans will destroy each other and Creation, as he did want to use Jack’s powers but there was also a sales pitch there for Jack which he’s now doubled down on. 

(And in a different vessel he’s like an uncle, but in Dean he’s living in a father figure… the whole hamlet thing about Claudius marrying his mom and the violation and awfulness Hamlet feels about that after he murdered his way to the position, except his Uncle is literally possessing his father by force instead… So that makes it all that much more awful about Michael wanting to take Jack with him, as it would look superficially like that impala ride and fishing trip for eternity. Except. Not.) 

I have really been watching this whole Michael thing unfold from Jack’s POV more than anyone as I watch and it makes a lot of sense to me in this way and not really surprising that Jack was singled out to have a long scene with Michael doing his villain monologue and to be given some more individual stakes. They haven’t spent many scenes together but they have a super intense relationship with Jack sworn to kill Michael since 13x14 and taking it as his burden, even to the point in 13x22 he tried to slip away and stay behind in the AU to do it when everyone else was leaving. Most of his life has been lived wanting to kill Michael and it’s pretty much the most damage his psyche has taken tbh. If we’re getting a Jack as the main character sort of centric main arc, then the specific tension of the world they’re struggling over and how they want to live in it is where I’m keeping my attention when it comes to this arc :) As well as the intense family drama between them, because Michael is coming at this family drama as Jack’s AU uncle more than anything. Even his connection to Dean is incidental compared to his actual personal ties in the narrative to Jack. 


	3. How Lily Helped Jack

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Hey! I was rewatching Byzantium and the part where Lily says 'Jack will use his soul to sustain his body' got me confused cause wasn't that the original problem with the situation like won't Jack die again? Since he still doesn't have enough grace and his soul can't support him all the way. Or did he get his grace back or smthn.

* * *

Heya! I think it’s specifically Lily’s powers brought up because she uses her own human soul to do angel magic. After 12x10 we had a lot of discussion of this hybrid magic and the tl;dr is that she is doing the exact same magic an angel would, but burning up her soul, a non-renewable resource, to do what an angel can as a renewable resource. 

The reason Jack and all nephilim are super powerful and scary is that they have both a human soul which provides a massive power boost, and angel grace which is a long burning power, and this sort of theme has been around since season 6, like 6x18 where Cas powered up off of Bobby’s soul to get enough power to time travel after being wounded. Never mind the main plot arc with the Purgatory souls etc :P 

So the nature of Jack’s grace and himself as a nephilim is different from both Lily using her soul for power without angel grace to give endless energy, and an angel using their normal power, and really makes it more like if Cas permanently had his hand shoved in Bobby’s soul, siphoning it off, and theoretically stable enough to not explode Bobby in the process because the whole being born as a nephilim thing creates genetic stability in this super powerful self-perpetuating engine. 

Having his human soul removed a la Abaddon’s soul-stealing shenanigans for example would probably harm him just as much as having his grace stolen, as unlike how humans don’t physically rot without a soul, and angels don’t rot without a grace, he’s built to contain both forms of power. 

(At least this is the world building logic I’ve gleaned from all this)

So when he uses Lily’s magic type to stabilise and heal his body, he is using ANGEL magic with his HUMAN soul, and this is the exact right sort of hybrid magic to heal him from within, though at a cost of not having angel grace to use as the power so that he has to switch to the back up of his soul which is a finite resource. The price may be that he has to do this several times and that’s not long-term good as he will use up his soul in the process, as we saw that Lily stopped using the spell and rapidly aged rather than sort of resuming the aging process naturally. Clearly her magic is a stay of execution rather than powerful enough to hold off old-age naturally and not have this alarming process of aging after. 

But yeah in the storytelling her magic is a neat at least short term fix for Jack as she was introduced specifically to explore the dual natural of soul and angel magic just a couple of episodes after Jack was conceived, in order to give us some lore to work with about Nephilim, their power, and so on. She was introduced almost like a human alternative, the finite, destructive version of the magic Jack would have naturally and without limitations.

She’s given Jack a way to trick his failing systems into being flooded with angelic magic to complement his human soul, and honestly my first thought after the episode (among all the crying) was a fear that having discovered a source of power, Jack might be tempted to tap his soul for other purposes as he does miss his powers and is exactly the sort of dumbass kid age to recklessly charge ahead using them without considering the consequences, which will make once-soulless!Dad very upset if this happens >.> (And the other dads, but Sam has personal experience of the “oh god no” of it all.)


	4. Father/Son fishing bonding break

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> 🎣 So, Dean’s happy memory of fishing with his dad - do you think it was with John (if so, before Mary’s death or after?) or Bobby?

* * *

My instinct on seeing them fishing before Jack said anything was to assume Bobby was more the sort of dad who would have taught them to fish just based on 7x09/10 and the final retconning done to prove Bobby had “always” been the more attentive father and give him a sort of check mate to John… But Jack’s comment to me seems to make it too obvious to not think that they really are talking about John, because his legacy is all over Dean and Jack’s relationship. There’s something so grim about everything to do with them, that I’m just constantly simmering in low-key horror every time they interact (so I’ve been absolutely living for the last 2 episodes :P) and I think it is to explore the left over trauma John gave Dean in what Dean now deals out to Jack, or how they DON’T follow in the same toxic paths. Dean teaches Jack to drive after deciding he’s around 18-19 based on the birth year he spitballs at the hospital, and so unlike how he learned to drive when he was in single digits so that he could ferry them around in an emergency, Jack is getting adult rite of passage stuff with Dean.

I think the typical fishing with dad age in the tropes is like, 10 onwards and early teen, sort of initial adult bonding with the son as well… Kids much younger than that dont have as much attention span and my vague impression of the trope is of a manhood ritual that fathers take on themselves. It’s probably likely John taught Dean when he was pretty young just because he was forced into everything young, but I think it is important that this reminds us there WERE good times, just that the story focuses on the tragedy. I think John and Dean probably did fish together at least a few times and it probably was this manly quiet bonding time where they had intermittent conversation, caught some fish, and felt all manly and Dean felt all grown up and awesome. Fishing seems to be about catching a moment of peace and quiet and it’s a good thing both for Jack to do here and also as a memory for Dean of John which really shows a nice quiet moment to illustrate when things could be good. 

Like I said in my notes, though, like with Mary having to clarify for Sam that a nice John is her John, Jack clearly sees that the fishing was a one good moment in a sea of awful with Dean and John and he wants this experience with Dean BECAUSE it was a good time and stands out amongst that. It doesn’t have to be redemptive of your image of John, but I think it’s interesting that because they’ve been serving us this story for so long about how John was such a poor father, and because it’s all high stakes drama until these last couple of seasons where things can slow down and breathe, we rarely get much context of why they would ever like John’s memory at ALL. 

Dabb also wrote 10x09 with the reminiscing about John saving Dean when he was roofied at that club, and it was way more complicated in the dynamic and giving us a lot to debate about when it came to how John had handled it and so on, but again it was presented as them having a good memory of John to share and feel that he wasn’t  _all bad_. 

It comes across to me like a healing process for Dean to be able to teach HIS son to drive and to fish with him, and despite the tragedy, their dynamic is healthier and things are coming across much better than how Dean was raised and that’s very obvious underneath it that Dean is giving Jack a better time and being a better father, but also walking in John’s footsteps as he does so. Sort of like… Each step along the way, healing something that might feel bad about John with doing it better with Jack, perhaps… 

I liked that Dean suggested a hook up and Jack flat out refused with a better idea for their own personal bonding… It was very different from 5x03 and Dean trying to give Cas the ~human experience~ of course, but also there’s a real sense that Jack is rejecting all the associated sadness and toxic masculinity/coping mechanisms etc in Dean’s hook up habit and choosing a more wholesome activity. And again that reflects back on Dean that he didn’t take Jack to get some momentary pleasure where obviously it wouldn’t even really be bonding between them any more, it would just be forcing Jack through a rite of passage to ~make a man of him~ in a way where I can see John almost approving of Dean having hook ups from when he was about the age he reckons Jack presents as in this same way Dean is working through a natural assumption of what someone would want/what a boy is supposed to do. But Jack isn’t here for that, he has limited time in his mayfly life and he knows what he wants, which is WHOLESOME father/son bonding and that involves inherently rejecting some of the worse aspects of the emotional landscape Dean was raised in. 

And also just that Jack can ASK for this affection and get Dean to give him the same experience as his happiest memories with John, while I imagine for Dean it was 100% guided by John to decide when and where they would fish, as Dean inherently had a subordinate relationship to John, which Jack doesn’t have with Dean despite the obvious son/father relationship they do have and the way Dean does care for him and guide him now. 

… This ended up a longer ramble than I meant but I am so utterly in love with Dean having a son and it not playing out like Ben, but that by coming to him from the other direction, not that he was some precious thing that could be broken, but discovering that Jack wasn’t a monster and finally seeing himself in Jack, that it’s unlocked the ultimate version of Dean’s nurturing side which we’ve been getting only glimpses of for so many years :’) 


	5. Will Dean And Cas Ever Talk Again Ever??

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> But WILL Cas actually still have a conversation with Dean about Michael? Or about anything really or on their own. They dont really share much screentime anymore

* * *

Heya! :D You forced me to go get dinner, so thanks I think :P 

TBH think is one of those things where i feel like you have to step back a lil to appreciate it without the pain of being a fan to see what they’re giving us - and trust me I know that pain but also have managed to box it aside to give the story a fair chance, with things like 11x06 supposedly having a conversation etc that people got VERY worked up about that never materialised as desired, and then as well over time the more and more conscious efforts the show makes towards knowing that we want this sort of content. 

I think it’s really important to be aware that the show has changed and is trying, and should be judged on this metric and not purely a platonic ideal of Destiel in the show that we’ve conjured vs the concept the show is only garbage and never delivers etc etc of a narrative that it will ALWAYS disappoint. 

I can only speak for having been in fandom since 9x18 but I think I joined right at a crunch time in the show vs fandom that had been ongoing since 9x03. Where I believe quite firmly the show vs fandom dialogue started, while the Jensen vs fandom dialogue started at JIB of that year, at the end of the season, both of these awful PR incidents within fandom being a nadir before beginning a rise both in the way the show was handling the relationships and the actors were engaging with the fans. Even though I joined in season 9 I’ve seen almost all of Jensen’s tentative to horrifyingly embarrassing dad online use of social media because it took him a LONG time to dare to use it. I think there’s been a serious change in fandom vs supernatural just in the last 5 years. Another incident was the tubbing of Charlie followed by the SDCC and Carver getting dragged while Dabb watched chuckling from the sidelines. Within the year Dabb had creative control of the show. 

I remember season 10 being a long series of annoyances that Dean n Cas were not in communication and that they were separated and while it could be rationalised as plot, they had like 2 phonecalls all season and 1 was just a plot update with Sam in the room in 10x14 and one was the horrible call in 10x21 which tipped Dean off that something was up. Even then the plot thing made somewhat sense to me because new in fandom when I was, the end of season 9 featured a LOT of Dean and Cas separated but asking after each other over the phone, even so much as people memeing that the only good bit of Bloodlines was Cas calling them at the end and of course Dean taking the call so you could meme a bunch of crackposts about what exactly he said off-screen to get Dean to zoom back to him and abandon the dire spin off to its fate. 

And there was SO much not mentioning Cas in episodes that the “where’s the angel?” meme was actually in its element, and it was a notable part of being a Cas fan. We really COULD get pissed he hadn’t been mentioned 3 episodes in a row, and when he was there were bullshit explanations (riverboat. gambling.). Other times he just disappeared then showed back up at random. And even in a stretch of episodes where things were supposedly going quite well in terms of having Cas around, the choppy weirdness of season 10′s structural issues and last-minute fluff episode insertion of 10x20 etc really messed with everything, so Cas disappeared from the Bunker so thoroughly that Dean appeared to go out to kill vampires the night of the pizza party and on returning to the Bunker, Charlie and Cas seemed to have eloped and then next thing we knew Cas was off checking up on Claire and later it turned out he didn’t even have his car so WHAT was he driving in 10x22 Dabb??? 

*ahem*

Anyway. Season 11 even before Carver left began to feel like it was supposed to have somewhat of a change towards the positive. Cas and Dean talked on the phone in the first episode, and then Dean worried about him for 3 straight episodes, then he was on the phone in 11x04 and Dean worried about him in 11x06, and there were mentions of him in every episode for a really long streak, explaining where he was and even when the same bullshit explanations writers were at it again sending him abroad, at least it was for plot reasons rather than making up that he’d discovered gambling, you know? He had an emotional arc about himself and how he was feeling and how a lot of the neglect and drama of the past few seasons had affected him, as he hadn’t got any inward looking for a while, and even when he wasn’t around while being Lucifer, at least it made it ABOUT the fact it was Cas in there, and again gave us very good moments of them constantly worrying about Cas, and especially Dean stepping back from the Amara hunt and focussing on Cas. 

Full Dabb era to me has not just been shakily applying the principles that were slowly appearing out of the smoking wreckage of seasons 9 and 10, but now written really knowingly that we care about Cas, want to see him having his own personal stuff, that fans will be unhappy if he isn’t mentioned per episode, and as well it is very clear that the main arc writing under Dabb’s know how and control is fully into the concept that Dean and Cas are emotionally interesting to write together or about how they feel about each other, and should have scenes together and do things together. Or that they are focussed on each other in ways where their emotional pairing is natural. Even season 12 which, as a taking up the reigns season, focussed hard on integrating the new family set up into the story, and using a lot of Cas moments or Cas and Mary moments to give Sam and Dean the wider immediate family sense. They were paired together to show they were equally valid members of this family and both balancing their opposite issues with belonging and self-value and therefore the overall aim with multiple episodes with them - like Cas and Mary trading off in 11x09 to sacrifice for Sam and Dean just as a Dabb-written main example - was to show how they cared and that they were just as Winchester about it as Sam and Dean were about each other. They would die for each other and fight for each other and it was awesome. 

And then we have the first 6 episodes of season 13 for how Dean feels about Cas. We also have 2 episodes where Dean and Cas extensively work alone together with 13x06 and 13x14 where they get proper mid-case sequences together. And in 13x13 and 13x14 they have private conversations checking in with each other and Dean especially being both apologetic and concerned. And there’s a bunch of other stuff that goes on through that season which shows how much they care about each other or understand etc. Lots of eye contact and silent communication. I think that season feels especially long and spaced out because even though of course I loved both the episodes as new lifetime favourites, Wayward and Scoobynatural borked up a lot of the pacing and created obstacles for where Cas was supposed to be in the plot. 

But, it’s REALLY important to me that it’s understood that there’s a huge feel-good vibe about the way the show is approaching Cas, and Cas and Dean interaction and story arcs, no matter how the line goes that the show never lets them be alone together or always mistreats or forgets Cas. Their behaviour HAS changed and they DO mention Cas almost every episode, and we don’t have to ask “where’s the angel?” especially as when he’s not on screen he’s almost always off doing stuff we understand and Sam and Dean know about, and he’s much more domestically built into their life structure, and working on the same things as them or at least following a lead for them adjacent to what Sam and Dean are doing in a much more cohesive way. Cas no longer shows up to bring an angel plot or sense of main plot to them. It’s only in the last couple of years that Cas episodes stopped feeling like a pocket universe to what Sam and Dean were doing and it’s become less rigid and there’s overall a greater comfort and sense of relaxing about what is and isn’t plot episode and what Cas CAN be around for, and what he brings to the stories in those instances. Episodes where he’s just there to help and be around Sam and Dean rather than where the story all springs from his presence even indirectly, or because that part of the story only gets told around him. He dips in and out while feeling much more embedded in their domestic and personal lives, meaning his absences are considerably less awful than when he was just randomly taking off and not being seen. Now there’s a sense that if he does that, he hasn’t come home. 

So, finally, as to whether Dean and Cas will talk this season about Michael… i mean, it’s very likely just because it’s plot and Cas is around for that, and he and Dean have such similar concerns here. Cas had a very inward pointing episode in 14x02 and his last argument with Jack was about him and Dean and the stakes Michael brings to that - it really was a direct call out on how Cas would put Dean first every time, even if he has to “watch him murder the world” to call back to 10x22. Jack doesn’t even know that but he can challenge Cas over it, and Cas immediately digs in and reveals he still cares about Dean this much. This all means that Cas this season has mostly struggled with the angel vs vessel thing in relation to himself and to Dean and Michael, with the left open absent gap that obviously he has been possessed himself in similar circumstances with Lucifer, so he also has direct sympathy to Dean, which hasn’t come up yet though with Nick around still (ugh) it’s still somewhat an element of the story and not overtly forgotten, even if it’s left only for us to fill in the blank. 

It seems weird to me that Cas would have this sort of season so far and NOT have some things to say about Dean and Michael that might be interesting with a just him and Dean scene, as the main plot of the season has these emotional repercussions on Cas that 14x02 called out for us. And if not, Cas’s main stuff this season HAS been built of these blocks, meaning his story is currently looping around these concepts even if we haven’t seen how it properly settles yet while the focus is on other characters. Which means it’s a ball in the air being juggled, and one of the ways it comes back down for a moment would be in conversation with Dean. Or in further conversations ABOUT Dean. You could tell it all with Jack and Cas arguing… I so would not mind if it was done right :P 

There’s also the lingering detail of Cas and Dean having being left in the last instances of 13x23 as the characters in the room when Dean said yes, and Cas as the last shot before michael!Dean at the end, how it seems to link them emotionally, and put Michael!Dean on Cas’s mind in that way. The beginning and end of seasons often link in ways which weight the main emotional arcs of the season in ways which follow on end from end. The best example lately has been how Sam was left with Jack and Dean with dead!Cas in 12x23 and the way that ran through season 13, so that the final confrontation being what it was, the shape even if the plot wasn’t obvious was all there in 12x23 and we could immediately see that Sam had the better link to Jack in the symbolism (from 12x19 really) so of course he and Jack get the big bonding awesome moment in 13x23. And Dean and Cas are still all about each other even when of course they have so many other things to worry about they don’t always stick together like glue. 

Being as we’ve had so few episodes with Cas and somehow implausibly even fewer episodes with Michael it feels like, whatever is super most important in the plot just isn’t manifesting right now and we’re dealing with Dean’s healing and Jack’s decline in this Dean vs Jack sort of vibe. But with how I see the show and the way I feel about its writing taking a positive turn towards flattering the stuff we want to see, which I feel is a conscious response to fan pressure and just general realisations about what we’re getting out of it, I feel like Dabb has very clearly steered the show to a more emotional and character-led and very very domestic curtains fic kinda place, while of course keeping up the angsty plots to drag them away from home. There’s been a noticeable and positive improvement in Cas’s relevance, emotional arcs, and the way they write DeanCas stuff to give them more embedded plot level emotional significance, and the respect Dabb showed their relationship in 13x01 is absolutely mindblowing and a vote of confidence which will carry me through years even if I didn’t feel okay about the ongoing stuff from there, which I do so it’s cool :P And the show has even started trying to regularly tick a “mention Cas” box, which since sporadic efforts to pass the Bechdel test every episode, they’ve really honestly been better at this one than the latter overall, notable Wayward-y stuff aside. 

Which means I don’t have any certainty but I do have CONFIDENCE that the show will most likely have some pay off or positive and emotionally appealing scene about/with Dean and Cas and making their experiences and relationship important to the plot/each other, because the last few years have been basically a parade of giving me what I want to see and doing better year on year with the stuff that fans bitch to the show about on Twitter that seems worth doing to the show. 

I mean, be nice to the writers. Thank them for doing anything you like, all the time, and you’ll probably see more of it. Especially if you manage to not sound like you have a wild agenda or want to win an argument when you thank them :P They seem receptive to liking what we like, giving us what we want within the bounds of the plot and formula and just generally how we can EXPECT the story to get told. And I have plenty to say about expecting the story to give us what it canonically routinely DOES and then being pleasantly surprised for the last few years as it constantly beats that expectation, vs conjuring the version of the show you want and being constantly disappointed as it fails to live up to it… Which I feel is a source of a LOT of the nastiness towards the writers >.> Who really are just trying to entertain us, you know :P

Sigh, sorry, tangent rant but just thinking about Twitter makes me shiver. It’s incredible they do still like writing what they write and give us this wild supernatural 4.0 that’s somehow better than the show’s ever been in the very specific departments that the general bubble of fandom I’ve been in this whole time has always seemed to be asking for. And consequently, I’m perpetually baffled about how a portion of said bubble always seems to doubt and be upset about what to me have become positive and exciting developments in the building blocks of the show that I expect to see just as reliably as Sam and Dean’s dreadful attempts at motivational speaking to each other.


	6. The Ghost Of John In Hatchet Man

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> what do you think the batman keys getting torched is foreshadowing for in Mint Condition? is it just John's influence having to go?? should i be worried for the Impala? not gonna lie, i was immediately worried what it meant for the Impala in the endgame after that ep.

* * *

It does feel like one of those things where it means a lot of different things depending on where you come from it… The keys belonged to Jordan who was perhaps a more Bobby-father like influence on the comic shop guys, but possessing the hatchetman figure, David Yaeger had the whole John mirror thing going, of course to the point of actually having John used to represent him in the movie. Then the keys themselves, Dean’s claimed to be Batman before, and drives the Batmobile (I think the model or one very similar is used as the frame to one of the Batmobiles depicted on screen at some point… hazy detail but it’s Baby’s own celeb cameo in there like the shout outs to J2′s past nerdy work :P).

There was really similar imagery in 10x13 and 10x16 of burning John-related items (a truck and a journal) and I think it’s come up other times, but in general it seems - through the length of the show because this goes back to the start, like, 1x18 or 3x10 - the spectre of John is invoked, killed, and gives them a moment of clarity or healing or self-reflection. But not so much as to make them less scarred in a fundamental, ruined childhood way, or to give them a strong sense of having completed the character development and moved on completely from it.

I think there is an ongoing evolution and the show has been fighting John’s influence on them and Dean especially the entire time, but the scars are deep and between intentionally not fully healing Dean and the length of time it takes to heal, the development has been pretty slow and sporadic and takes a lot of forms, with lots of symbolic moments of moving on along the way. So John still has a lingering presence but by now the nuance and depth of what has been explored especially of Dean’s broken psyche is just essay after essay of discussion of his character journey, and I’m not the sort of person who thinks the show forgets they handled all this every time it gets brought up again, but that each time we encounter it it adds something more to our understanding and people be like that in general with their issues :P It seems natural and realistic to me that Dean has been through all he has and still carries some weight of John around with him but also understands he does and has moved to trying to set it aside over time, but still hasn’t fully done so, no matter how much better he understands himself, and that in some ways he won’t ever fully recover from it. 

So I sort of feel like these MotW like this one and also 14x05 can tell us a LOT about Dean and John and burn all sorts of items that symbolically represent this that and the other about his influence, but at the end of the day a lot of it might be about illumination and understanding more than foreshadowing and clear and immediate character progress. Which isn’t a bad thing because overall Dean has changed SO MUCH from who he once was, and it’s impossible to understand these characters as static figures set in the original tropes they presented as or you thought you understood them to be beyond that on your first take. Which is a trap a lot of clever people fall into when they analyse the characters or their take on the show back in like the earliest seasons or appearance of a character, and then never manage to course correct from that because they become very set in being right about that. Dean’s massively different to how he once was but it’s taken 14 years and he’s been through a bunch of different iterations in that time, of course not in linear progression forwards in a positive way. And it’s been really subtle so episode to episode and even season to season you might not see it until you really lean back and think about the comparisons.

And to me there’s a lot of stuff where it’s these MotW mirrors that chip away bit by bit to uncover the story underneath that add to this very slow progression and deeper understanding, but really sort of feel in an immediate story-reading way to be functionally useless. like, I don’t think any particular harm is directly foreshadowed by them to the car, unless Jack manages to plunge her into a ditch when Dean lets him drive and then she has to spend a few weeks in the recovery bay, and Jack is probably murdered and all that Dean vs Jack tension turned out to be foreshadowing for a comical death… :P 

I guess the most practical use for it would be the whole John’s influence has to be let go thing, which has been done extensively in ghost episodes, and even a whole season mytharc parallel with Bobby’s ghost in season 7. It might not foreshadow an immediate and dramatic change, because I doubt those would ever happen, but it can draw our eye to the character dynamics we’re supposed to be focusing on right now and prepare us to see what the writers want us to see in the story, and make us ready for a discussion about Dean vs John’s memory and to elucidate us on where he is with that now. 

 

(honestly after typing all this I’m really leaning towards the Jack crashes the impala and Dean straight up murders him scenario though)


	7. Dean's TV

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> 📺 14x04 Mint Condition is the first time we see a TV set in Dean’s room, right? He must’ve gotten it sometime after 13x16 Scoobynatural? So the set up Dean and Cas used when watching Tombstone and possibly other movies (like alluded to in 13x06 Tombstone) was probably somewhat different than what we saw in 14x04?

* * *

Hey-o!

Dean has historically never had a TV for sure. Sam’s had his since 9x04 for sure, and despite in 8x22 Sam rolling his eyes at Dean wanting to get a pool table or whatever it was - aka Dean’s early yearning for the Dean Cave, which took him 5 years to complete - Sam was definitely the one who went all in on updating the Bunker to his tastes. He added the mini fridge in the library, the TV in his room, and had been working on re-wiring just about everything by 9x04. (We remember from his time with Amelia, he had been working as a handyman so what practical skills he didn’t already have with electronics, you can bet he nerdily studied up on in that time, so stuff like 11x02 where Sam is extremely handy with making things is a fairly standard part of his characterisation.)

(Of course everyone’s way into Dean’s technical competence but that seems to revolve around devices, computers and weaponry, if we’re measuring up strengths.)

Anyway. So Dean seems to have always favoured watching TV in the main rooms of the library or war room, setting up his laptop and snacks and beer and just sitting on the uncomfortable chairs there - even in 10x09 when he was watching completely for himself and Sam stumbled on him watching old movies there. 

13x16 with the reveal of the Dean Cave suggested Dean had always wanted this sort of more personal/public watching space where they didn’t have to go to Sam’s room to watch TV like in 9x04 but also was more comfortable, the sort of thing having a normal lounge room like most houses do offers (or even nooks with sofas or similar set ups for people in smaller accommodation who carve out something similar). It’s an interesting commentary on his nesting and his more social attitude. Sam immediately got a TV because his room was somewhere he could lock himself away and watch whatever he wanted, while Dean as the older child, let’s face it, probably was the remote hog in the motel rooms they grew up in. Even though Sam and Dean have cultivated different tastes in media that they even manage to hide from each other into adulthood, Dean’s far more the one who comes across as an avid TV watcher, but in a motel space, the TV is part of the public, shared room. So a living room with a TV is a space I think suits Dean’s approach to TV. The big TV completed the Dean Cave for him, and would have been its centrepiece, and he’s been clearly working on the project for a while and keeping an eye out for a TV worthy of it. 

And then he has to destroy it to free the lil ghost boy who reminds us of a smol Dean, complete with an attachment to his father’s knife… 

And that puts Dean back into laptop-only TV watching and perhaps he just doesn’t have time to work on a replacement in the following time, but by the time he’s un-michaeled, he is confronted with a Bunker that doesn’t feel like his own any more, and we can assume the Dean Cave is included in that, especially as he set it up as a social public area, so the strangers would gravitate towards it. 

(It’s also interesting that a lot of time passed in 13x23 so Dean could have got to know some of the AU peeps better, but Sam was always leaning towards helping them, while Dean was out teaching Jack and Cas some more hunting when we caught up with them) 

Anyway, this is Dean’s room in 14x03:

And the same spot in 14x04:

Dean’s TV watching has turned insular, and of course we have to assume he’s been leaving to get things like just the pizza and beer (and to go pee >.>) but also he’s found time to get a TV or steal Sam’s or order one off of Amazon or whatever, and FINALLY complete the set up in his room, which seeing as Sam’s been 5 years ahead of him on it, he appears to have never really wanted for himself, as he’s seen the Bunker as his home overall and not been shy about using its whole space for himself as entertainment rooms.

So… yeah, this is quite a dramatic statement to show his introversion and how the AU peeps have driven him into his room, as when we’ve previously seen him hiding out in his room, it’s always been either reading, using the laptop, looking at photos, or listening to music, and his watching has either been in public areas or openly shared.

When it comes to when and how he forced Cas to watch Tombstone with him… I think not in the Dean Cave, or if so, an early iteration of it. The recliner set up is terrible for watching a movie on a laptop as they’re too spaced out for the small screen to sit comfortably in front of them, so sitting side-by-side is much better. Sam’s involvement is strictly out, as he’s always been eye-rolly about Dean and cowboys. I have to conclude that Dean n Cas either watched it side-by-side knees touching in the library/war room, or on Dean’s bed with the laptop propped between them, because without a TV in there before 14x04, their options suddenly become dramatically more intimate :’)


End file.
